A Nymph Surprised at her Bath by a Satyr

c. 1630 - c. 1635

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 58.2 cm × width 50.6 cm

Inscriptions

signature, lower right: Mº. v. W ƒ

Technical notes

The support consists of two vertically grained, horizontal planks and is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1606. The panel could have been ready for use by 1617, but a date in or after 1626 is more likely. The ground layer is of a light colour and the paint has been applied smoothly and with considerable detail. The entire composition was first set out in an underdrawing, which was, however, not rigidly followed. The nymph’s hair, for example, falls over her shoulder in the underdrawing, but not in the painting.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 29 August 2002
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 22 September 2003

Condition

Fair. The two planks are on different levels. There are some small losses and abraded areas. The varnish is discoloured except in the areas of the figures, which have been cleaned separately.

Provenance

...; sale, J. Hollender (†), Brussels (Galerie Saint-Luc), 12 April 1888, no. 153, as Michel van Woreven, fl. 195, to the museum

Object number: SK-A-1462

The artist

Moyses van Wtenbrouck (The Hague c. 1590/1600 - The Hague 1645/47)

Moyses Matheusz van Wtenbrouck’s date of birth is estimated to have been between 1590 and 1600, based on the fact that his earliest dated work, an etching of Peter Healing the Lame Man at the Door of the Temple, is dated 1615.¹ His first dated painting, a Judgement of King Midas, is from 1622.² He had joined the Guild of St Luke in The Hague two years earlier, in 1620. As he was charged the same low fee as other painters born in The Hague, it is believed that this was also Wtenbrouck’s place of birth. His brother, Jan Matheusz, joined the guild in 1614. In 1627 Moyses van Wtenbrouck served as dean in the guild, and in 1638 his name was put forward to serve on a committee to select two new heads for this institution. By 1624 he had married Cornelia van Wyck, who is recorded as his widow in 1647. Moyses van Wtenbrouck must have died sometime between 1645 (in a document from that year he is referred to as still being alive) and 1647. It is often hypothesized in the earliest literature on the artist that he travelled to Italy. However, no documentary evidence for such a trip has been found. Nor is it known who his teacher was.

Apart from one painted portrait, Wtenbrouck’s extant oeuvre consists of landscapes with mythological and Old Testament subjects. More than half of his paintings depict themes taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. His paintings from the 1620s show the influence of such Pre-Rembrandtists as Pieter Lastman and Claes Moeyaert, while a debt to Cornelis van Poelenburch has been detected in his work from after that period. Wtenbrouck also executed a number of etchings. Constantijn Huygens praised him in his autobiography, and he was one of the artists who decorated Honselaarsdijk. His last dated painting, the 1642 Mythological Scene originally hung in this palace.³ Wtenbrouck was the teacher of Dirk Dalens I (c. 1600-76) and the two sons of the carpenter Sacharias van Dalem, from whom he purchased a house in 1642.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Obreen III, 1880-81, pp. 262, 271, IV, 1881-82, p. 4, V, 1882-83, pp. 72, 305; Bredius III, 1917, pp. 921-35, VII, 1921, pp. 236-37; Weisner 1963, I, pp. 212-18; Weisner 1964, pp. 189-91; Buijsen in The Hague 1998, pp. 272-76, 361

Entry

The subject of this painting has most often been identified in the literature as Pan and Syrinx from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (I:686-715). In Ovid’s tale, Mercury relates how Pan mistook the chaste naiad Syrinx for the goddess Diana and chased her to Ladon’s stream. There she begged the water nymphs to transform her into tall marsh reeds. In 17th-century representations of this subject, such as a collaborative work by Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder,⁴ Pan is shown in hot pursuit of Syrinx, who has just reached the river Ladon. A different painting by Wtenbrouck includes a personification of the river, with Syrinx in the process of changing into the reeds.⁵ It is unlikely that the Rijksmuseum painting depicts the same subject, as the female figure is not shown fleeing from the satyr, but rather reclines on a riverbank facing him. Moreover, in the background, another satyr is seen playing the pipes Pan fashioned from the reeds Syrinx had turned herself into.

Weisner’s suggestion that the subject might be taken from Act 2, Scene 6 of Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido, which involves the nymph Corysca and a satyr, is equally unlikely.⁶ This theme was treated very rarely in the 17th century, and only once in northern art, in an etching by Bartholomeus Breenbergh.⁷ While the satyr does pursue Corysca in Guarini’s play, Breenbergh and others⁸ preferred to depict the satyr pulling Corysca’s hair (actually a wig) once he had caught her. The Rijksmuseum painting appears to show simply a satyr surprising a nymph at her bath, and as such is related to an etching etching by Wtenbrouck of a Woman Surprised at her Bath by a Shepherd (fig. a).

Weisner placed the present painting among what he called Wtenbrouck’s ‘arcadian Dutch’ landscapes of the 1630s.⁹ Characteristic features of the works from this period include the painting’s vertical format and the spotlight illumination of the figures. The figures themselves no longer possess the Lastmanian robustness present in Wtenbrouck’s production from the mid to late-1620s, but are smaller in scale and less sharply defined. Wtenbrouck’s new figural style has been related by some scholars to the influence of Cornelis van Poelenburch.¹⁰ Also characteristic of Wtenbrouck’s landscapes in this period, but already present in some of his works from the 1620s, are the massive, gnarled tree-trunk on the left of the Rijksmuseum composition and the twisted, dead branches of the tree in the centre. As Chong has pointed out, Van Coninxloo and his followers would have been important examples for Wtenbrouck in this regard.¹¹ Another feature of the present painting, and of the artist’s ‘arcadian Dutch’ landscapes as a whole, is the muted, glowing tonality, which differs dramatically from his use of primary colours in the 1620s.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 350.

Literature

Weisner 1963, I, p. 138, II, p. 4 (as Pan and Corysca?); Weisner 1964, p. 206, note 91, p. 219, no. 4, with earlier literature (as Pan and Corysca?)

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 305, no. 2721 (as Pan and Syrinx); 1934, p. 325, no. 2721 (as Pan and Syrinx); 1960, p. 348, no. 2721 (as Pan and Syrinx); 1976, p. 551, no. A 1462 (as Pan Waylaying the Nymph Corysca?); 2007, no. 350

Citation

J. Bikker, 2007, 'Moyses van Wtenbrouck, A Nymph Surprised at her Bath by a Satyr, c. 1630 - c. 1635', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5619

(accessed 7 June 2024 13:35:20).

Figures

fig. a Moyses van Wtenbrouck, *Woman Surprised at her Bath by a Shepherd*. Etching and engraving, 148 x 139 mm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-P-1880-A-4204.